Poster Session

The poster session always begins on the second day of the symposium at 8.30 in the morning and delegates soon start to arrive and mill around. By the time the poster session is in full swing, this casual milling soon turns into a swarm. Throughout the auditorium, delegates can be found clutching their abstract books, eagerly reading and annotating them. A low toned murmur of hundreds of people discussing their work with their peers creates an outstanding atmosphere along with the tell-tale sound of Velcro still echoing around the auditorium as delegates dip into their bags to find their trusted abstract book.

Our care information development manager, Sharon Schillerstrom is presenting a poster at this year’s symposium so I caught up with her to ask her about her poster.

Sharon feels that it is important to present her work at this year’s symposium to raise awareness of the new literature that the MND Association has developed for children that are affected by MND. She says that it’s only natural for adults to feel that they must nurture and protect their children as they may feel that telling a child about MND would be too distressful. However, there’s evidence to suggest that when children are shielded from this information then this makes them more anxious – this also reiterates what Baroness Finlay mentioned in her opening speech.